I've never played any Half Life games

[Infinitron]

only opposing force being the only universally accepted one. But then again isn't that just an expansion pack? Not playing as Gordon? Wut?

It's an expansion pack and you play as Gordon, but what makes it extra fun is the fights with allied marines against the aliens. Also, no boring jumping puzzles IIRC. Just more and better action, like a good expansion should be. Blue Shift is a good example of what an expansion should not be.

What? No you don't. You play as Marine Adrian Shephard.

As for Blue Shift, that was originally supposed to be a set of bonus levels for a console port.

 

[octavius]

only opposing force being the only universally accepted one. But then again isn't that just an expansion pack? Not playing as Gordon? Wut?

It's an expansion pack and you play as Gordon, but what makes it extra fun is the fights with allied marines against the aliens. Also, no boring jumping puzzles IIRC. Just more and better action, like a good expansion should be. Blue Shift is a good example of what an expansion should not be.

What? No you don't. You play as Marine Adrian Shephard.

Really? Shepard? OK, it's been a long time since I played it...

As for Blue Shift, that was originally supposed to be a set of bonus levels for a console port.

Isn't it funny how everything that turns to shit somehow is connected to consoles?

 

[Infinitron]

Really? Shepard? OK, it's been a long time since I played it...

Shephard. With an h.

 

[octavius]

Really? Shepard? OK, it's been a long time since I played it...

Shephard. With an h.

Duh.

 

[Castanova]

HL1 is a classic but I can't say if it held up until today. HL2 is a bloated, overrated, giant piece of meh. It's like the Gladiator of FPS games. If someone says they thought Gladiator was a great movie I know they have bad taste in movies. HL2 is this for video games. It's not bad but it's so mediocre that it only people with bad taste could find it great.

 

[DraQ]

HL1 single player campaign was OK but overrated - it's not as good as the classic FPS oldies. Great multiplayer though, one of the most fun I've had on LAN with friends.

Half-Life's way of integrating the story into gameplay was unique at the time and has had huge influence on gaming since then, but the game itself is nothing special.

I think it's the opposite. HL1, for one, had zero cutscenes.

Hence "integrating".

 

[Borelli]

By today's standards HL1 is very old school although for it's time it was somewhere in between (linear levels, having to reload weapons). Personally i think you should play it, it's not better that its predecessors but it is a very solid game.
First expansion pack Opposing Force has a "see the same story through different eyes" which is always a cool thing. Blue Shift is short and more of the same.

HL2 is again somewhere in between old and new school, it has no cover and health regen but it's not completely fast paced arcadeish. Very linear and with variety in level design. Almost every level throws something new at you. Very solid game although i don't see why the praises for the "cutscenes". Excellent facial animations. So yes, you should play them both.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

HL1 single player campaign was OK but overrated - it's not as good as the classic FPS oldies. Great multiplayer though, one of the most fun I've had on LAN with friends.

Half-Life's way of integrating the story into gameplay was unique at the time and has had huge influence on gaming since then, but the game itself is nothing special.

I think it's the opposite. HL1, for one, had zero cutscenes.

Hence "integrating".

Which actually turned the game into 'Escort that Doctor simulator'.

 

[Darth Roxor]

First expansion pack Opposing Force has a "see the same story through different eyes" which is always a cool thing.

It also has more (and better) guns, new enemies, better enemy AI, much cooler levels and better pacing. It's incredible how Gearbox managed to turn into what it is now after starting so well.

 

[sea]

I don't get people who say Half-Life 2 is a failure next to Half-Life 1. Although the shooting mechanics and enemy variety are not as good, I find the level and scenario design is more varied and better paced. Yes, there are first-person cutscenes which are unskippable and yes, the story is more "in your face" and it's not as subtle, but I don't think that it's an inferior game. As for those who say it's more linear, that's bullshit. Both games are super linear, and Half-Life 2 has just as many levels where you can engage in some modest exploration as Half-Life 1 does.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Half-Life 2 has horrible AI, annoying vehicle sections, peashooter guns, BLABLABLABLABLABLA that goes on for fucking ever with generic characters that I'm supposed to care about for some reason, some shit levels (especially endgame, which is unacceptable) and many others that are gigantic blobs of wasted potential (see: Nova Prospekt). It's inferior to HL1 in just about every aspect sans for OMG INNOVATIVE PHYSIX! and we all know how useless and irrelevant that is. Just about the only cool levels of HL2 are the initial escape from City 17 and Ravenholm. Everything else is forgettable trash.

 

[Multidirectional]

Half Life is great, you should totally play it.
Half Life is a piece of overrated shit, avoid.

 

[DraQ]

I'd play HL1, OpFor *and* Blue Shift.

HL1 is, well, HL1, plus it's good. Also, HL1 has *the* Glorious Gauss Gun.
OpFor is pretty great, but it tapers off towards the end and the ending is meh, feeling like the entire thing has been sidetracked.

BS is the weakest (mostly due to having *less* stuff than the original), but is helped by remaining consistent to the end. Plus, BS has Xen sections that aren't durpy platformers.

Both expansions are nice in how they intertwine with the original.

Then move to HL2.

(you can't be a graphics whore, HL1 did not age gracefully).

I'd say it did. Not as well as Unreal (obviously), but it looks pretty solid.
Its main weaknesses are blurry textures on scenery and weak lighting model.
Other than that it's only really held back by being mostly set in rather uninteresting interiors, but that too changes towards the end.

HL2, of course, aged *very* gracefully in terms of visuals.

Also one thing that is often forgotten when countering praise of HL's AI is that creatures in HL use different senses and have fairly diverse behaviour.

It isn't just how good the AI is at killing you, it's also how interesting and convincing its behaviour is.
HL AI is nor just mehreens throwing grenades at you when you camp behind a box.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I'd play HL1, OpFor *and* Blue Shift.

HL1 is, well, HL1, plus it's good. Also, HL1 has *the* Glorious Gauss Gun.
OpFor is pretty great, but it tapers off towards the end and the ending is meh, feeling like the entire thing has been sidetracked.

BS is the weakest (mostly due to having *less* stuff than the original), but is helped by remaining consistent to the end. Plus, BS has Xen sections that aren't durpy platformers.

Both expansions are nice in how they intertwine with the original.

Then move to HL2.

(you can't be a graphics whore, HL1 did not age gracefully).

I'd say it did. Not as well as Unreal (obviously), but it looks pretty solid.
Its main weaknesses are blurry textures on scenery and weak lighting model.
Other than that it's only really held back by being mostly set in rather uninteresting interiors, but that too changes towards the end.

HL2, of course, aged *very* gracefully in terms of visuals.

Also one thing that is often forgotten when countering praise of HL's AI is that creatures in HL use different senses and have fairly diverse behaviour.

It isn't just how good the AI is at killing you, it's also how interesting and convincing its behaviour is.
HL AI is nor just mehreens throwing grenades at you when you camp behind a box.

I wish those fuckers could bluff, ffs. I want to run away like an idiot when someone screams 'Throwing a grenade' when actually aiming at the place you might appear in the same second.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I wish those fuckers could bluff, ffs. I want to run away like an idiot when someone screams 'Throwing a grenade' when actually aiming at the place you might appear in the same second.

Which is exactly why Opposing Force also happens to be better. The black ops don't yell their intentions like morons at all

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Got about halfway through the first one...then quit. Decided to start again a few years later with the sequel, and the same thing happened. Wandering around in one of those dune-buggy levels and I stopped and asked myself "WTF am I doing?!"

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I wish those fuckers could bluff, ffs. I want to run away like an idiot when someone screams 'Throwing a grenade' when actually aiming at the place you might appear in the same second.

Which is exactly why Opposing Force also happens to be better. The black ops don't yell their intentions like morons at all

Well, I don't like enemies yelling, but bluffing could be a refreshing thing. Just imagine the amount of butthurt when a fat n0Erd finds out that he was tricked by AI.

 

[DraQ]

Which is exactly why Opposing Force also happens to be better. The black ops don't yell their intentions like morons at all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_in_the_hole

 

[Metro]

HL2 isn't as bad as some of these drama queens are making it out to be.

 

[AlexOfSpades]

Its a nice series. If you have nothing else to play on your backlog, try them out.
HL2 dropped the ball a little with its linearity and Alyx being a living tutorial arrow, but then it made up with the interesting physics-based puzzles and the delicious driving sections (I know some people that hated them, but personally they were the best part of the game for me).

They're not perfect games, but they're still fun - and that's what games are supposed to be, right?

 

[DraQ]

Its a nice series. If you have nothing else to play on your backlog, try them out.
HL2 dropped the ball a little with its linearity and Alyx being a living tutorial arrow, but then it made up with the interesting physics-based puzzles and the delicious driving sections (I know some people that hated them, but personally they were the best part of the game for me).

They're not perfect games, but they're still fun - and that's what games are supposed to be, right?

1. I liked driving sections but they were too long.

2. Physics based puzzles were ok, I guess, though I only really liked them the best when they subverted previously learned solutions (the one in Ep1, for example).

3. HL1 was fairly linear too, as most FPSes (again, tangled line is still line)

4. The area in which HL2 *did* drop the ball is enemy and weapon variety. Seriously, after all those different aliens and weapons in HL1 we've got what?

 

[octavius]

I don't get people who say Half-Life 2 is a failure next to Half-Life 1.

For me it was just such a gigantic disappointment after all the hype.
So in the end I ended up enjoying Unreal 2 and Invisible War more because I had much lower expections for them than I had for HL 2.

 

[Average Manatee]

HL1 is great. Dunno why people moan about Xen and platforming. You had to learn how to platform in the fucking tutorial of all things. You run and jump. If you can do it once you can do it a hundred times without fail. And there's quicksave, so you don't even lose anything if you fail.

HL2 has a lot worse core FPS fundamentals and tries to distract you from this fact by throwing an endless stream of new gimmicks at you (You can see the impact it made as every modern AAA+ FPS since copies this). Entire levels full of vehicles, infinitely respawnable NPCs fighting for you, vehicles, the antlion gimmicks, even more vehicles, and then that travesty of an endgame. Basically 1/2 the levels in the game as so mind-numbingly easy that they shouldn't even exist. But ehh, it's still "Good for what it is" I guess.

HL1 expansions I can't remember. I haven't played them in so long.

I don't get people who say Half-Life 2 is a failure next to Half-Life 1. Although the shooting mechanics and enemy variety are not as good, I find the level and scenario design is more varied and better paced. Yes, there are first-person cutscenes which are unskippable and yes, the story is more "in your face" and it's not as subtle, but I don't think that it's an inferior game. As for those who say it's more linear, that's bullshit. Both games are super linear, and Half-Life 2 has just as many levels where you can engage in some modest exploration as Half-Life 1 does.

HL1 levels had a lot more hub-like levels. HL2 levels were almost always entirely linear.

 

[Suchy]

...except for Counterstrike 1.4 to 1.6, and I'm very good at it. But otherwise, I've never played any of the canon series. Does this makes me a faggot? Should I play them one day, or I'm missing out one of the awesomest game evah?

Just skip them, most overrated shooters ever.

 

[Silva]

Play only the first.

The second is shit.